“Water, water everywhere …

…. And every drop to drink.”

I’ve always been very frustrated that in the west all water in the house is drinking quality.

We wash with drinking water,
we wash our clothes with drinking water,
we clean the car with drinking water,
we water plants with drinking water,
we wash the floor with drinking water, we drink drinking water,
we cook with drinking water
And we flush the toilets with drinking water.

It seems very hard. We have been to many places
…where there is no drinking water available from a tap in a house.
…where water has to be collected from a shared well or tap
…. where water has to be boiled and filtered before it can be used
… where water carries diseases and dirt.

I try very hard to be aware of this with every drop that comes from the tap.

Meanwhile the average water consumption in the west is around 160 litres a day.
58,400 litre a year.
water facts south west

Yet people only drink about three litres a day.

What do we do with the rest of it? All of the above.

In our house it’s 53 litres per person on average.

This year’s water bill summary brought news that we’d reduced our consumption again.

Here’s one key thing we do.

We conserve water for washing.

1. When we shower the hot water system takes a long time to produce water warm enough to wash in.
So now we have a really smart solution.
It’s called a bucket.

When use it to collect the cool water.

And then

It’s another way to flush.

Meanwhile having a shower is something we don’t do all the time. Since I stopped using shampoo it means I wash my hair with water and it needs washing less. So often I don’t need a shower. I just wash.

First we run the cold water again and then use the hot to wash. And then it goes to the same place.

This way a lot of clean water is not allowed to run straight down the drain.